


Brightside

by octobertown



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Real World, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Because obviously Maul is a Heathcliff, Brooding, Cunnilingus, Daddy Kink, Dirty Talk, Dirty Thoughts, Edging, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Maulsoka, Praise Kink, Smoking, Strangers to Lovers, This show is 21+, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Wuthering Heights References, eye fucking, safe sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:40:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26051293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octobertown/pseuds/octobertown
Summary: Ahsoka shut off the spray, her body ticking like an overheated engine, sleeplessness and the surreal feeling that it was over before it even started an unreality she couldn’t quite hold on to. It kept slipping through her fingers when she tried to grasp it, but making a fist, she could still feel his fingers laced through hers.She turned the water to freezing, trying to shock herself out of whatever lingering impressions the night left on her: the feeling of his body clung to her limbs like she was wreathed in cigarette smoke. Fading, but persistent, and when she closed her eyes she could see his smile, and feel the rhythm of their bodies moving together — no simple melody — but unlike anything she’d ever known just the same.Like he was a song that she couldn’t get out of her head.--Wherein Maul is the lead guitarist of Crimson Dawn, and Ahsoka, unsuspecting, challenges him to prove to her that music can touch a person. Maul succeeds. A hardcore/doomcore/punk rock AU in three parts.
Relationships: Darth Maul & Ahsoka Tano, Darth Maul/Ahsoka Tano
Comments: 27
Kudos: 70
Collections: Maulsoka Fanfic Writers (Discord), Star Wars Multishippers





	1. Friday

**Author's Note:**

> Lil' Peep: "I gotta look at the brightside. I guess she wasn't the one, right. This isn't what love's like -- That's for sure."

—

**FRIDAY**

—

To begin with, she didn’t even want to tag along that night. Rain struck the street in fits and bursts, further souring her mood as they waited in the dingy alleyway outside of the Death Star by the side door — Anakin, dressed head-to-toe in black denim and leather and practically bouncing on his heels, and Obi-Wan, who’d gone to the other extreme: a camel-coloured cardigan over something that had to be LL Bean.

Also, it smelled like a dumpster.

 _Also_ — she was fairly certain that there was someone in the alley with them; clinging to the shadows near the back, smoking a cigarette. Probably stage crew, but maybe an axe murderer.

In New York, it was hard to tell sometimes. Especially when you had to reason that you were maybe possibly about to get mugged.

But seriously, people still smoked?

Gross.

“I’m telling you,” Anakin was saying. “If they’re half as good as Sid said they are, I’m in.”

“I suggest we sit through the performance, in the very least. You’ve options, my friend — there’s no need to rush into a multi-year commitment.”

Anakin shook his head. “Opportunity knocks. Do you not answer the door?”

“Technically I think we’re the ones knocking and no one’s answering, right now,” she muttered, casting a glower at the locked door before them.

The lineup circled the block out front. That they were getting gradually soggier waiting for Anakin’s contact — the band’s manager — to let them in, wasn’t helping.

She should have stayed home where it was warm and dry and there was Netflix and a whole cabinet’s worth of herbal tea, and she didn’t need earplugs to spend the next three hours listening to a band she didn’t particularly like, followed by another she’d never heard of.

“I’m just saying that you don’t play a place like this without heavy connections, especially for the experimental shit on the roster. Death Star seats a thousand people, with a quarter of that number on the floor. This is _exclusive_. This is _hot_. And the crowd is going to be absolutely insane — especially for Crimson Dawn.”

Right. Them. Some experimental post-industrial-doom-hardcore-noise… thing… that Anakin was obsessed with, Obi-Wan humoured, and Ahsoka had never heard of. They’d sold the place out for two nights in a row, and partially, she suspected, that was due in part to the opening band’s notoriety. The Knights of Ren had a tendency to wreck a stage before the main act even set foot on it.

People showed up just to watch the shit show.

Why Anakin wanted to subject her to this —

He clapped her on the shoulder. “Snips gets it.” She frowned. She really didn’t. But Ahsoka expected he was going to tell her.

“There’s something thrilling about seeing a new band for the first time — especially one that’s as visceral as these guys.” He shook his hair out of his face. “I remember the first time I heard them play,” he said. “It was —“ He licked his lips, his eyes taking on that far-off look. “It was transcendental. Primal. It struck a chord in me I didn’t know I needed plucked.”

Ahsoka glanced at Obi-Wan’s pleasant smile. “Did you know Anakin liked getting plucked?” she asked.

He chuckled. “I wasn’t aware Anakin had ever been plucked.”

“Maybe we should tell Padme,” she deadpanned.

“Maybe you two haters just don’t understand music.”

“I’m not sure shaving a gong for an hour with a hacksaw is actually considered music —“

He scoffed. “Snips, if it was up to you, you’d still be playing the same Figrin D'an track on repeat. This is enlightenment. I am offering you,” he spread his arms, “an experience.”

“A ‘visceral experience’,” she repeated. “Like getting disemboweled, or…?”

Something prickled at her attention — a peculiar sort of heat that settled on the back of her neck. She touched her braids absently, trying to divest herself of the feeling, at first, but found herself warming to it as her fingers tickled over the back of her neck, soothing.

Glancing behind her, there was nothing out the ordinary in either direction. Just the low curl of smoke from the alley’s end which, for all she knew, might’ve been an exhaust vent.

Anakin made a face. “Obi-Wan, cover your ears.”

The eldest of the three raised his eyebrows in surprise, but complied.

In an undertone, Anakin stage-whispered, “Like the best orgasm you’ve ever had. Ever.” He gave her a pointed look. “The kind of entire-body full-on Molly trip that makes you think you drank a half bottle of bourbon, knocked back three pills, and made some bad decisions, but you’re so sated that it doesn’t even matter. An aural stim so aggressive that you feel it in your —” He gestured.

She stopped him, her voice a little shrill. “ _Okay_. I get the picture.”

Anakin leaned in. “It’s so good it’ll make your toes curl.”

Obi-Wan removed his makeshift earplugs. “Good?”

Ahsoka rolled her eyes.

She shifted around for a frame of reference that might suffice to serve his description, but came up dry.

“Ahh haa!” Anakin said, pointing. “That’s why you need this.”

Folding her arms across her chest, she fixed Anakin with her best dour look. “I would’ve been okay with listening to the Spotify mix.”

“Nope,” Anakin said. “Not for my sis from another miss. You’re getting the full deal, tonight: the crowd, the crush, the watered-down beer. A birthday present for your twenty-first: something to remember me by — your first real show before your big bro signed with Dark Side Records and got all that fame and money.”

Obi-Wan’s smile was a little tight when he assured her, “We’re keeping our options open.”

“I thought managers were supposed to manage —“ She made an air circle around Anakin. “This.”

Smiling, Obi-Wan said, “Have you met him? I often wonder if the likes of his particular… talents… aren’t beyond my pay bracket.”

From beyond them down the alley, the sinister smoking swath of shade emerged, chucking the butt to the ground into a burst of sparks against all that shiny black asphalt. Beneath his hood, Ahsoka couldn’t make out the man’s features — only the shape of his mouth, a strong jaw, and the shock of tattoos lanced across his throat, including the word, “Savage.”

Dark and damp, and glittering with drops of rain as if the sky had splashed across his shoulders and he continued carrying it with him as he pulled a fist from his pocket and rapped on the door. Hard. Hard enough to make her jump.

It opened, the scent of beer keg and stale air archived in sweat and spilled blood rolling over them as he shouldered past them, slouching around the bouncer and disappearing into the dim corridor beyond.

Ahsoka stood blinking after him, trying to piece together the grim presence who’d been in their midst and the ease at which he was admitted, while they stood around getting soaked. She thought of her couch. She thought of her laptop. She thought of the _Terrace House_ marathon she should be having right then. And summarily gave up at once, her skin prickling with something foreign and intrusive:

It felt a little like she’d failed to catch the plot — her adolescence ceasing with the snap and recoil of certain adulthood, and she’d somehow missed out on the pleasures of irresponsibility; of relying on anything but her own self-sufficiency to see her through, and now there were _Consequences_ to her _Choices_. Like, what was she going to study in college? Could she even afford tuition? Did she even want to keep working her shitty barista job at Starbucks making skinny frappes for the wealthy Karens who brought their little dogs in for Puppucinos and then gave her attitude when the whipped cream wasn’t vegan?

Discomfited and overly warm, she remained there, staring after the shadowy figure, not knowing why, but feeling as if she’d missed a marker on life’s road, and she’d taken the wrong path somewhere along the line.

Anakin blinked up at the enormous man blocking their way.

Obi-Wan said, “Ah! Hello there!” At approximately the same moment a shrivelled, hunched man in a black sports jacket materialized before them. Black shirt. Black trousers that Ahsoka suspected were leather. He swam in all of it.

“Ah, young Skywalker — and friends!” he greeted them. “Welcome, welcome to my establishment. Palpatine,” he introduced himself. “But you might call me Sid.”

—

This isn’t your scene. That much is clear by the sheer lack of interest in the explanation offered by your companions regarding the nuances felt by those willing to succumb to the music. It’s clear in the way you hold yourself — a little put off and a little bothered by the damp, waiting out here in the rain for entry to a show that you did not want to attend. But you see, my dear, as a London native whose seen enough streets and enough music halls, enough tour busses and enough aeroplanes, that old adage holds true:

Seeing it all is wearisome.

I have something to show you, though, and I hope that you understand it’s the reason I return night after night when others have moved on — their bands’ bonds as fragile as their bones, their connection to the sound as tenuous as their hold on themselves.

It drives some of us, you see.

It sweeps us into its rhythms and it allows us to submerge into sheer sensation for a time. It lets us forget those nightmare things that plague us even when our eyes are open.

Others it drives insane.

You’re out of your depth, of course. You’re not dressed the part. You’ve no armour and while I’m certain you see such vulnerability as a charm, I see you: nude and fragile and despairing, and I know your heart. Mine beats there too.

A good girl led to my plinth like an oblation.

So. Please allow me to welcome you to the temple I call my own. It was built by others before me, but I uphold a legacy and a tradition, and I serve at its altar nightly.

You may never gather in worship, my dear, but I’d ask you only this:

Give me one night of your time.

Give me your body.

And I will give you —

Everything.

—

Someone stamped her hand and gave her a bracelet. No VIP tags — just the low-key marker on the wrist that said she had permission to drink and permission to lurk behind the curtains, but not so far behind the curtains that she had access to the dressing rooms.

Not that she had any interest in that.

What was interesting, Ahsoka realized with rapt interest, was watching the crowd flitter into the club, gathering before the stage — some ran to get the best spots possible, others parked themselves immediately to the floor to better hold a position in front. Legs crossed, holding places for their friends.

Having never been to a show before, it was fascinating to see the sea of black teeshirts and skinny jeans and sneakers, piercings and tattoos, and strange hues in their hair. Some had mohawks and some had shaved heads and some wore skirts. Some were retro and some were not. It felt as if she’d missed an entire subculture, and here they were: coming out of hiding.

“Hey, Snips.” Akakin had his hands stuffed in his back pockets. Never a good sign. “We need to talk business, the three of us. Sid says you’d probably have a better time if you were out on the floor, also there’s this NDA thing before the contract is signed --“

She had known this was a bad idea from the get-go.

“You’re ditching me and the show hasn’t even started yet.”

“Yes,” he said. “But we’ll meet up after and go for drinks. Promise. I think we’ll catch a bit of Crimson Dawn, but I don’t want to wreck your night if I can help it. I’ll make it up in a couple.”

She waited for the other shoe to drop.

“Promise.”

Damnit.

“The other thing is that I—“ He scrubbed at the back of his head — an extra not-good sign that was building up to kick her anxiety in the teeth. “I think you should see the show like you’re meant to.”

She pointed at him in warning, ready to give him a thorough thrashing.

He caught her wrist.

“Oh,” he said, his shoulders easing down from his ears. “Oh cool. Okay.”

“What?”

“Yellow,” he said, a grin threatening. He held up her wrist. Waggled it before her face so that her hand and the bracelet on it flopped. “You’re in the pit.” He pointed. “Standing room only.”

She looked at the assembly of people gathering before the stage.

“I’m seeing the show — from _there_?”

“At least you’re seeing the show,” he pointed out. “I get to go listen while Sid and Kenobi haggle over me.”

He fished forty bucks out of his pocket, thought better of it, and gave her an extra twenty.

“That should buy you enough drinks to make you forget how much I suck.”

He beamed.

“This is sixty dollars,” she said.

He pointed at the handwritten sign above the bar. “Twelve bucks a beer and they won’t even let you have the bottle.”

She glowered.

“Don’t forget to tip. They’ll spit in your solo cup if you don’t.”

And he left her with a little wave of encouragement. It was a whole minute before Ahsoka scoffed to herself, ticking with annoyance and staring at the door he’d disappeared into, and forced herself to skulk up to the bar.

She bought herself a shot, firstly. (Ten dollars.)

And then, a beer which was domestic and luke warm that she knocked back on the spot. And then another to take with her.

She tipped five dollars to the unsmiling bartender, and turned to find that the “pit” had filled to its midway point.

Ahsoka took up her guard at the back, a little off to the left, entertaining the possibility that she could always skulk off and text Obi-Wan later, because she _certainly_ wasn’t speaking to Anakin right now and probably for the next week.

The Saturday night rationality that, “if she was going to suffer through this, I might as well try to enjoy it” stuck hard, and she nursed that second piss-warm beer with the kind of vengeance-energy that curdled cow’s milk and caused unexpected droughts.

The lights dimmed to dark, and those who were sitting on the floor hauled themselves to standing. A few cell flashes went off, the light not strong enough to reach the stage —

From the dark, a percussive hammering started. Slow enough to mimic the heartbeat, a roar started from the front of the stage and carried back through the crowd and over her head.

Ahsoka looked up to find that there was a gallery ringing the room, and it was full.

An enormous man appeared half-cast in a spotlight a moment later, a heavy guitar strap biting into his collarbone.

His breath was a shudder, the whole of him quivering, he spoke in a low tone into the mic, “Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.”

And the stage lit up for the Knights of Ren as the first chords screamed from the speakers, the drums pummelled, and the lead singer stomped into their first song — his hair in his face, wearing a look of anguish.

Ahsoka chugged the rest of her beer, noped right around, and went to get another promptly.

—

You’re out there in the crowd somewhere, though from my place behind the curtain, waiting in the wings with my bandmates as our touring partners conclude their set, I can’t see you.

While there exists a possibility that we may never cross paths again, it’s a feeling that lingers in me, yet:

I am wrong.

Whatever cosmic force stirs the stars, I know for certain that a calm surface belies a strong undertow, and I’ve audience for the spectacle. I am the show.

Are you out there?

I am ready to draw you deep.

Sink with me, my dear.

Encircled amongst my people, I am alone. Dryden hums with energy, stripped to the waist and sweating as he paces — a caged animal ready to be unleashed. Our drummer smokes her cigarettes, on her phone yet, one boot propped on a crate. Margo and Cornelius are silent, as if preparing for war. Tobias prays over his bass.

I hear it as a whisper, a melody crowded out by the din. They are singing our song: low at first, and getting louder — an ululation meant for widows that calls for abandon, destruction, despair —

The anthem of a disenfranchised youth.

Qi’ra looks up. Tobias too. A deferential nod from both. Dryden is white as a sheet, his pale eyes ghostly in the low light. Even he awaits my signal.

The din becomes a roar. Darkness soothes. No peace. No rest. Only rage. Only passion. Only hate.

I lift my hood, divest myself of everything but my obsessions, and I shoulder my weapon, my saber, my axe —

And I step out on stage to summon you back to me.

—

Reclaiming her post, a little buzzed, a little warm under the collar, she stripped off her sweater and tied it around her waist. The lights dimmed even further, the sounds of muffled conversations and laughter oddly normal between sets. Others crowded in, arm’s lengths between the other people around them. A group of men dressed in similar uniform (black boots, black jeans, black tee shirts) crowded behind her, but there was still room enough between them that she was comfortable — even if it meant she could only kind-of see over the heads of everyone in front of her.

One guy who jostled her even apologized.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, she reasoned.

Someone to her right took up a chant — people clapping in between. She couldn’t make out the words at first, but soon, others had joined their voices to the sound.

They were shouting.

Ahsoka turned, finding that several people around her had raised their arms in solidarity, joining in to holler out words to an anthem she didn’t herself know. Strangely, the rise and fall of the melody tickled at first, the harmony lifting the hair on the backs of her arms.

Soon, the guys behind her joined in, and she could make out snatches of what they were singing:

“— _Took everything from me. Rip me from my mother's arms; murdered my family. Use me as a weapon — abandon me. Once, I had power; now nothing... Nothing! Always remember, I am nothing! And I am still hungry..._ ”

A roar rose as the lights winked awake above the stage — like a giant eye blinking open, it set a man in silhouette against a dull red backdrop. The first wail of his guitar arced through the speakers, cutting her breath short. A sound of pain, like a wounded animal who hadn’t yet lost the will to fight in a world that cared for it not at all, and loved it even less.

And then the entirety of the hall drove forward, striking her between the shoulder blades as the crush of people in the back pressed towards the front, carrying her with it in surprise.

A blender, she thought, tossing her arms up before herself, crushing into the guy in front of her as the group behind her surged. Her feet left the ground, and she found herself tossed into a wave of bodies that carried her forward — fists raised, howling with the wail of sound.

One man commanded the entire hall.

One man alone and drenched in red, his face cast in shadow, raised lumps of flesh like horns pebbling his scalp. He stood dressed in tattoos from head to toe, the muscles in his arms like cut rock — and when he tipped his head back, his hand leaving the strings for just a moment to command the crowd to scream, to raise their voices in unison, Ahsoka thought for a moment she understood what Anakin meant:

This was something sacred.

This was something primal.

She saw the flash of teeth, his satisfaction plain, and the rest of the band crashed into the song; a tumult that hammered at her heartbeat, the bass forcing the rhythms of her body to obey.

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. Sweat and heat pressed in on her on all sides, and when someone shoved someone else two people away and they fell into her — the guy next to her helped her back to her feet.

No acknowledgement that it had happened. It just did.

Trying to turn, she found herself trapped in the crush — no way out save for the spare pockets of space that opened between people, the music pounding, others shoving forward and taking those gaps and forcing her closer to the stage.

The lead singer — a pale man slicked with sweat, his limp hair plastered to his forehead — droned something into a mic in hitches and breaths, a melody that was ground under the heel of the synth. It looked like the guy on the keyboard has been in a bar fight just prior to coming on stage, and the girl behind him... Ahsoka was pretty sure she wasn’t human. No one was _that_ tall.

It was the lead guitarist that drew her gaze back. The man was veiled in red lights, his markings as black as sin, his body strong and his sound cutting — he stared into the crowd with singular purpose: as if he were searching for someone. As if he knew he’d find them.

He set his boot on the amp in front of him, leaning into it, his fingers moving over the strings without needing to concentrate on them —

And Ahsoka fell sideways, someone smashing into her at full tilt, pressing her towards the blender that had formed in the middle of the concert hall: a spinning mass of bodies circling each other, arms flailing to hit and slap and shove.

For a moment she stood in the eye of the storm, people churning around her as she stumbled, righted herself, stole a breath as panic spiked. She was so small compared to so many bodies around her, and the thought that she might have to fight her way out bloomed hot and angry in her.

Out of the corner of her eye, movement on stage caught her attention. It took only a split second of distraction, but a disembodied hand shot out, catching her in the right breast. A strike. It hurt.

The lead guitarist rose overhead, arriving right at the edge of the stage, his toes right up against the four foot drop between him and the crowd.

Ahsoka looked up, the sense of disembodiment hitting her low and hard as she clutched at herself, hunched inward in self-defence. He continued hammering out the song — there was no hesitation and no pause in his playing, but that stoic resolve fixed her in place:

It seemed as if he was staring directly at her.

Jostled, she tread the edge, trying to fight her way away from the circuit of those running circles around her. She shoved someone away before they could clip her shoulder, a volley of arms and fists.

She took a breath, steadied but still stinging.

The guitarist hadn’t moved. She registered light eyes in a tattooed face. A strong jaw. Straight nose. Impassive.

He raised his chin, defiant before her — challenging.

As if he dared her to endure the pit for his behalf.

As if he wanted to see what mettle she had.

A small smirk graced his lips, his head tilting back to display corded muscles in his neck, his chest a sculpture hewn from marble, accented by heavy shoulders and thick forearms. He continued playing, his eyes darkened.

The hair on the backs of her arms rose to attention, goosebumps breaking beneath her sweat at his attention.

Impossible, she thought, but she didn’t have time to stop and consider why his frame appeared familiar. She needed to get out of the pit.

Ahsoka bared her teeth, tucked her elbows into her chest, her fists under her chin, and leapt for the edge only to be snatched from mid-air —

Shuttling a few feet, she staggered, and someone dragged her up. A flash of teeth in the dark. Arms shoving.

The air caught tight and hot in her lungs, and Ahsoka, running now to avoid getting stomped on or trampled — shoved _back_.

A boy with blue hair broke away from the wall of bodies surrounding the pit creating a wedge opening, and she dove for it — forcing her way out, knocking people out of her path as she tripped over her own legs, breathing hard, sweaty, and looked up to find herself within yards of the stage. She’d lost her sweater, but she laughed —

She was alive. Ahsoka _lived_.

And he stalked to the spot directly before her, as if he’d followed the course she’d taken from the middle of the floor to where she emerged again. The crowd pressed in behind her, and Ahsoka, now trapped so close to the stage, could only turn her face up to the guitarist’s playing.

Others pressed in around her, wanting to get closer, but there was no mistaking it:

His gaze settled on her, the look her wore impenetrable. He did not smile. He did not bear his teeth, though the music grew darker, heavier as one song became something new.

He stared at her, and Ahsoka, not one to back away from a challenge, stared right back.

She had no choice, really.

There was nowhere else to go if it prickled — if the feeling changed — because the song morphed into something lilting and deranged that tightened at her insides, and the guitarist…

He looked like he’d eat her alive.

She pulled a breath into her lungs, swaying with the crowd as it pressed in around her, the sound curling around her as if lulling her into a lover’s embrace.

He kept playing, pulling her deeper into the sound as if he’d intended this all along —

As if he meant to send her a message by tuning the beat of her blood and the hammer of her heart to his rhythm — as if he could command the too-light sensation in her limbs and lift her from the chaos she found herself trapped in.

She closed her eyes for a bit longer than a standard blink, and upon opening them, found that his expression had softened into a small smirk. That -- that did something funny to her insides, leaving her overly warm, her awareness of her skin brushing her clothes leaving her uncomfortable enough to want to shed them like a snake sheds its skin.

Was it possible to have an entire conversation with someone without words?

The girl to her left leaned into her ear, startling her. She shouted, “I’ve never seen Maul eye fuck someone so hard before.” She grinned, yelling, “And I’ve been following their tour since _Delaware_!”

Maul.

His name was —

She turned back to that penetrating gaze — a flash of teeth in the dark as if he knew that she knew what he knew:

He’d made her wet with a single, prolonged glance.

Ahsoka felt her face heating, her lips parting in a gasp that was swallowed by the music. Maul played, and he was playing her along with it; his hands were his chords, his mouth a melody, his song an extension of his body and he was reaching out to her as if he knew that with every driving beat, it felt like —

Ahsoka shivered, her body lit with newfound awareness.

Heat puddled low in her belly, her nipples pebbling, her mouth dry. The press of the crowd added an uncomfortable layer of friction between her clothes and skin, but the thing that left her taking shorter, quicker breaths through her mouth was the driving beat of the song —

Her eyelids fluttered. There was a metaphor in the music, each pulse pounding, throbbing —

She squeezed her knees together, the gleam of sweat on his muscles too visceral to turn away from. The strangest thing was that she couldn’t.

 _Maul_.

“He writes all their songs,” shouted the girl beside her. “All the lyrics.”

It struck her low and hard, all of a sudden, that she knew him — or at least, she’d seen him before. Those shoulders, that ink under a hoodie, smoking a cigarette, watching her disassemble the pretence of the whole thing in front of Anakin; in front of _him_.

Maul’s music. Maul’s band.

Maul fucking her: the idea superimposed on the impossibility of the moment, each lurch of the bass something carnal and his playing was an invitation to yield to it — to yield to him.

He lifted his chin, and she saw the word inked into his throat. There could be no doubt that he could be the same man from the alley.

In blackletter, the word across his neck read, “Savage.”

She needed to get out of there.

“Excuse me,” she managed, but no one paid her any attention — not, at least, until she got her elbows into a few backs and shoulders, her insides quaking, she tore her gaze away from him, shovelling people out of the way, trying to cover her over-sensitized body from being touched.

She angled towards the bar, not knowing how far away escape might be, but feeling his attention on her even as she ducked between a group of girls in skinny jeans and staggered out into cool air.

Doubled over, she clutched at her knees, gulping breaths — her body alight with something strange and sordid. She almost whimpered, with release so far away, the throbbing between her legs bordered on pain.

“Fuck,” she gasped, wiping her mouth with the back of her arm, and tossed herself to the barrier that separated the bar area from the sea of shouting, dancing, chanting people.

She gripped it like the cold metal might anchor her, and breathing hard, she glanced back over her shoulder to find Maul at the edge of the stage closest to her:

A smug smirk gracing his mouth. He’d never stopped playing. He’d never stopped watching her.

She tore her gaze away, ripping her phone out of her pocket with trembling fingers. She felt flushed — lightheaded — and so goddamned wound she could almost cry.

Taking the side entrance to the street, exiting the way she’d come to catch her Lyft, the sensation lingered:

Phantom hands on her skin, a mouth against her ear, the press of a hard, tight body against hers — and that smile grazing her throat.

—

I know that heat in your eyes: one part indignation, one part desire. You’re so offended that someone might make you feel this way without ever having touched you — and yet you can’t help but want more.

We are like vampires, my dear: and for this eternal, ephemeral thing we always thirst. There is no other pleasure as great, and no other way to ease the soul but to slake it, night after night.

Forgive me this indulgence.

Your anger is beautiful; it swallows the light in your eyes, overturning your darkest desires in a single glance for me, and I hardly even had to ask. I never said a thing. I only invited you to listen, to know, to feel —

Thank you.

Thank you.

Goodbye, my love.


	2. Saturday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where are you?  
> I’d call your name if I knew it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank youuuuuuu for the awesome kudos and comments.

—

**SATURDAY**

—

“I’m fine,” she assured Anakin.

He eyed her, his booted heel on the coffee table, looking smug. “You said that already. Twice.”

Nerves had her bouncing between the kitchen, the living room, and her bedroom. The raging debate in the back of her mind kept her moving. If Ahsoka kept moving, she wouldn’t have to explain to him the Stupid Thing She’d Done that morning after having her second cup of coffee, in-between doom scrolling and absently checking Tik-Tok just to keep her self occupied.

It didn’t work. Twitter either. Nor Facebook, but seriously, who used that anymore?

Maybe Obi-Wan.

She made a face. Anakin caught her.

“Something happen last night?” he pressed.

“No!” she barked, and then, her heel ticking, her hands on her hips. “No, it was fine. A little loud.” She waved at her head absently. “My ears are still ringing a bit. That’s all.”

Her cellphone vibrated, and she tore it from her hoodie pocket, nearly dropping it. One message. Craigslist.

Shit.

Her hear started a jackrabbit rhythm, leaping in her chest at the possibility that she was about to do something seriously twisted in the effort to — the effort to — how could she even categorize this?

Three hundred goddamned dollars. Her whole savings in tips from the summer, basically. She hadn’t had a plan for the money, but in her not-planning, she likewise hadn’t anticipated that she’d be forking it out to a scalper to go back to see the same band play two nights in a row like a… like a…

“Is it smack?” Anakin narrowed his eyes. “Did you develop a drug habit overnight? Because you’re acting super sketchy right now, Snips.”

That the scalper she found on Craigslist while sucking down her flat white that morning even had spare ticket was totally bonkers.

She was about to message him back to tell him she was good for it, when Anakin fell off the back of the couch in a tumble, and snatched her phone from her hands.

“Hey!” She leapt at him, but he fended her off, frowning at the screen.

It took a beat for him to process what she was trying to do before his face lit.

“You _liked_ it!”

She slapped at his arm, but he held her farther back than she could reach.

“You liked it _so_ much that you’re trying to get in a second night in a row! Ahsoka — this is _amazing_!”

“It’s not amazing if I can’t get a ticket,” she complained.

He glanced at her phone. “So you contacted a scalper on _Craigslist_?” He withdrew, giving her his best, you’re being ridiculous look. “ _Three hundred dollars?_ No. No way.” Anakin tossed her phone back. “You’re not paying that.”

Her heart hammered, defeat sinking heavily. It _was_ , though: it was a stupid idea, and she couldn’t explain to him why that was, because out loud it sounded even worse:

 _“No, Anakin, I’m not actually going to see the band play. I’m going to see the guitarist, and I’m going to corner him and get him to explain to me what_ exactly _he did to me last night that kept me awake until three a.m. trying to get off and not being able to sustain so much as a flutter of relief. P.S. cold showers don’t work. P.P.S. I tried.”_

“Hold on,” he said, taking out his own phone.

Typing furiously, he eeked away from her before she could get a good look at who he was texting.

Anakin relaxed, waiting.

A minute later, his phone chirped. He put it away, a sly smile spreading.

“8 p.m. Same door as last night. Knock twice.”

She blinked.

He threw himself back onto the couch, snatching up the controller.

“Squadrons?” he asked, hopeful. When she didn’t immediately respond, he waved the controller. “Dog fight?”

She didn’t move.

“You’ve got hours yet and I don’t have to meet Padme until six. Camaaaaaan.”

“How did you do that?” she demanded.

Stretching, he draped an arm over the back of the couch and rolled his eyes to the ceiling, pursing his lips. “I _know_ people now. Let’s just say that some of the perks of the new label are the connections.”

Her heart gave out a little stagger. She couldn’t even breathe the words, the reality registering like a weight pressing down on her shoulders:

Anakin had signed with Death Star.

“Snips?” He called after her, but she was already shaking her head, the world a little more blurry at the edges, quivering with this new revelation. “ _Ashoka_?”

“Congratulations,” she forced out over her shoulder, her smile a little tremulous. “And thanks. I’m gonna —“ She gestured vaguely in the direction of the bathroom.

“‘Soka! Hey!” He got up.

She stopped, steeling herself, and facing him again, tried her best to shove down the knowledge that it was coming to an end: this closeness they had; this time spent that was spent so well.

“You okay?”

Everything was changing too quickly. No she wasn’t okay.

“Yeah, just surprised. Tired. Adrenaline rush and then —“ She flapped at herself. “I’m really proud of you. I mean it, Anakin.” She smiled. It hurt but she fucking did it for him.

Anakin, appearing a little relieved, gripped her by the shoulders.

“Sure?”

She poked him in the ribs. “It’s not like you’re going on tour tomorrow.”

He grinned, crushing her to him in a hug.

“You’re gonna miss me when I do, though.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Hey, this idiot got you into Crimson Dawn.”

She rolled her eyes, hugging him back.

“I’ll buy myself a teeshirt just for you, okay?”

He held her at arm’s length, examining her face. Whatever he found in her expression seemed to satisfy him, at least, and he slugged her lightly in the shoulder.

“Careful tonight, okay? Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

A flutter of nerves erupted in her stomach at that.

She expected she’d do _exactly_ what Anakin might in the situation she’d set herself up for.

—

Another night.

Another show.

Another stage.

Over and over again.

And I am bone weary.

A disagreement again over an impromptu set change, Tobias and Dryden at odds, their argument past the point of a hostile simmer and escalating rapidly into broken furniture territory.

Qi’ra’s attempts at negotiations notwithstanding, she takes whatever barbed insults Dryden tosses without care in her direction. Dabs at her makeup when she thinks no one is looking, but I see. Tobias is going to mutiny. I see it in the way he looks at me, splotchy red and smoking too much. Dryden might kill him. Hell, he might do it on stage for the press.

How many albums might that sell, I wonder:

How many years would that add to my sentence.

I can always see the problem before it manifests, and I expect that tonight my prophet’s gaze will do nothing to stanch the wound. One might only observe, subdued, as the wreckage falls around you.

The fighting hasn’t ceased, but it’s curtain call, and I know how this will end tonight.

Where are you?

I’d call your name if I knew it.

—

Bypassing the line, Ahsoka slipped into the alley beside the Death Star, her shoulders hunched against the chill, her knuckles wrapped into her hoodie pocket. Hood up. The decision to wear all-black had been about as strategic as showing up early, wondering to herself if she might not find herself alone again.

She didn’t know exactly what she meant to say to him, because honestly, if she were parsing the bits and pieces of the conversation that occurred without words the night before, she’d be the first person to consider herself totally insane.

It occurred to her she might’ve imagined the whole thing, and that put her staunchly in the mindset to convince herself to beat it out of there post-haste.

Something kept her rooted, however:

If she couldn’t talk to Maul…

Ahsoka took a breath, her stomach doing a little flip flop.

She wanted to go unseen. She wanted to be the one watching _him_.

As if just looking at him might reveal the shape of what transpired between them, because something _had_ , hadn’t it?

She wasn’t sure anymore.

Passing the door, she eased into the dark behind the trash bins, finding a few cigarette butts littering the ground, but that was all.

It occurred to her that she might’ve missed him already, but all she could smell was the stink of the empty bins. Her heart thrummed, her nerves ticking like an overheated car engine as she eased back to the door and knocked.

The bouncer that admitted her checked her name against a guest list, and sent her on her way with a nod, shutting the door after her.

Yellow bracelet again.

She bought herself a beer, sipping at it as she found a place near the front left of the stage, taking a seat with the other early arrivals.

The opening act was fine, and she stood through it, barely paying attention. Movement off-stage behind the curtains kept drawing her, and through that little sliver, other people were milling around, getting ready for the main act. She couldn’t see anything of course — only shadows stirring the imagination.

She did her best to keep the fluttery feeling tethered, but it was a losing battle — especially as Crimson Dawn took to the stage, and Maul was the last to emerge to the thunderous roar of the crowd. Floating into the people ahead of her, Ahsoka took a breath, and found that she was fine despite being squished from all sides. As long as she yielded to the movements of the crowd, as long as she didn’t try to fight it, it wasn’t so bad at all —

Not like the pit, in any case.

He didn’t turn, and her attention on the muscles in his back didn’t draw him around. Their eyes didn’t connect and there was no lightning bolt moment.

She smiled to herself a little, wanting to laugh at the sting of it, but not finding it sad at all — just a little… Disappointing?

If there was some relief in knowing that it wasn’t what she thought it was — not some grand work of the universe trying to thrust her into the path of celebrity or some other shit — she could relax a bit. It wasn’t a thing. Still, the feeling that-was-definitely-not-sadness settled beneath her ribs, pressing on her heart just a little bit.

Maul wore a frown, his interest directed down at his playing, etching lines around a mouth pursed in far-off focus. From where she stood, she could watch the flex and shift of corded muscles in his upper arm as his fingers moved over the frets.

It wasn’t the same set as the night before, this song droned its maudlin ache in a melody that drifted as if meandering the halls of an old house that hadn’t been a home in many years. A quieter set, and the lead singer — Dryden Vos — was pinched with pain as he howled through it.

Maul turned in her direction, head bowed as he meandered closer.

Ashoka took in the too-low jeans and how they strained across his thighs, a thick belt, dark sneakers. He wore a black hoodie, half opened over a black teeshirt — the little v cutting over pectorals marked so heavily with ink she could hardly see skin. Closing in towards the left of the stage where she stood, the crowd pressing her forward, she saw up close for the first time that the little bumps dotting his head were actually implants:

A body modification making so many little protrusions from his scalp like horns.

Was it strange that in a certain slant of light, he appeared handsome to her when he should have been monstrous?

Or was it even a little curious that in chasing the thought — the man in question looked up at that moment, his brow furrowed as if unsettled, his gaze alighting on hers in a crowd of hundreds as if a string had pulled taut between them?

Ahsoka might’ve gasped, but no one around her would have heard the sound in the din as, behind Maul, the lead singer threw his mic stand at the bassist, clipping him in the side.

—

Oh, for fuck sake’s, Dryden.

—

The music clattered and crashed to a stop, instruments twanging to silence. A confused murmuring rumbled through the crowd, turning into shouts as the drummer stood first, storming off stage.

People in the audience began yelling, the crowd restless in a way that left her skin prickling, her heart pounding her ears. The crack of a fist against flesh was so loud she thought at first a fight had broken out in the crowd, but Dryden had tackled the bassist, and the meaty slap of a fist connecting with a face echoed —

Someone catcalled.

Others cheered.

The keyboards crashed to the stage as the others fought to intervene, but were pulled away.

Security guards rose, pushing people backwards from the stage as the crowd seemed to surge — squeezing forward as it became clear that the show would not go on.

The compression on her rib cage became vicelike in its insistence, as if the audience behind her had elected to shove people towards the band and there was no exit.

Panic didn’t strike her immediately. It took the pain in her chest to register before she started getting scared.

Someone tried to climb over her, pressing down on her shoulder and then her head, and Ahsoka ducked and reared. A boy not much older than her grabbed at her, tugging the neck of her hoodie with a rough yank, and acting on instinct, Ahsoka wound her fist back.

She struck.

He let her go, the feeling of his nose cartilage popping under her fist a secondary consideration to the splash of red that followed. She pushed him off her, her knuckles throbbing into her awareness.

A crash from overhead.

Maul disappeared from sight, and with angry voices and straining security guards added to the mix, trying to push back the people around her — Ahsoka wondered briefly if this was what it felt like to drown.

A hand slapped at hers, grasping, tugging at her by the wrist — and then the forearm.

Someone shouted, and it felt as if her arm was being pulled from its socket as she was wrenched her upward. Her hip caught the metal grate, snagging skin and her belt, and then her legs raked over as she fell into the four-foot gap between the stage and the crowd.

There were multiple places where her body stung, but the shouting hadn’t ceased, the barrier bowing under the press of too many angry people who’d paid for their tickets to a show that was about to get cancelled.

She watched that barrier, knowing that in a moment it might very well collapse on top of her, and with it — the weight of the three hundred people behind it.

A body moved beneath her, and startled, she twisted to the ground to land on all fours — but found herself caught against a chest, her legs tangling. A smooth-shaved jaw against her temple, saying in her ear: “I’ve got you.”

Calloused fingers found hers, gripping her, bringing her back to the awareness of heat and hard muscle under her hands, jersey cloth that smelled like cigarettes and fabric softener.

A flash of concern in those gold eyes, but he was already pulling her up, pulling her under his arm to better shield her as his body directed hers into the sidestage — stumbling and breathless, her various aches twinging to bruises and scrapes.

“Come with me,” breathed into her ear, cottony soft despite the din.

Surprise registered at the long vowels and crisp consonants, better befitting a Shakespearean actor than someone who played guitar in a doomcore band.

He held her hand, careful of her knuckles, which, Ahsoka realized belatedly were flayed and bloody and swelling just enough that she couldn’t make a fist. His other hand hand her by the belt so that when she staggered, he could lift her with him as if he’d dragged her off the battle field. One of these he handled gently, and the other left a streak of goosebumps up her side.

Maul.

“You’re bleeding,” he observed.

“You’re here,” she said in return.

Maul flicked that penetrating gaze in her direction again, and while Ahsoka might’ve lost her footing, he held on — held her up.

A small, curious smile.

“And you as well, it seems.”

Gathering her to him, he nodded in the direction of the curtains, leading her up a short set of stairs into the relative gloom beyond the velvet curtains. The world beyond fell to muffles, a broiling, angry mess of a fallout— the show wouldn’t go on.

In the dark, Maul reached back and found her hand.

—

Every choice you have made has led you to this moment.

Every moment ceases to exist before this one.

Did you know, somehow, that I’d thought of you?

Was there some dark magic in my summons, I wonder, because surely our paths weren’t meant to cross again. Those things that we desire most are fictions; the things I possess are few, because they seem so easily taken away.

I’m not meant for more than moments, that’s why I only asked you for one night.

But you’ve graced me with two.

—

He set her down, his touch lingering, her breathing loud in the relative quiet of the backstage until, with a crash — the fighting members of his band were dragged apart through the curtains.

Maul glanced at them, and then away.

Her hand in his, he looked at her rather than her bleeding knuckles, and remarked, “You’ve an excellent left hook.”

The lead singer continued spitting curses as the bassist was hauled off to tend to his injuries.

Maul, closing his eyes for a bit longer than a standard blink, appeared to collect himself.

“Last night --“ she started, but the words died before they could be a question looking for confirmation.

An amused curiosity lit his gaze, a small smile pulling his mouth up at the corner.

“Yes,” was all he offered.

The air breathed with it: that narcotic lull that seemed so comfortable, and so very soporific that it could become dangerous. If something stirred between them with that small acknowledgement, it shortened the breath, inching her closer to him.

“I’m Ahsoka,” she offered.

He snuffed a laugh, raising her bloodied hand to his mouth as if he might kiss the knuckles, and then thought better of it.

“I’m charmed.”

 _Shit fuck_ , she thought to herself — the rumble of the compliment a purr that drowned out the sound of the crowd. It rolled straight to her, sinking from her gut to that small, tense spot between her legs that made her want to catch her breath.

He tipped his head. Licked his lips. She watched him watching her, a number of things unsaid between the slight smiles and the inability to stop herself from lowering her lashes. Heat rose to her face, his attention on her mouth.

“Forgive me —“ he began.

“This —“ she said at the same time. “Isn’t quite going the way that I expected.”

Down the hall to their left, the lead singer snarled a string of insults, lashing out with his leg at the bassist, who, with his hair in his face, spat at him. The pair were restrained by two security guards who, despite the thrashing, fighting men, appeared to have their hands full.

“Sid will be here soon,” he said in an undertone, and dark look crossed his face. “He’s known to intervene.”

When Maul stepped into her space and touched her elbow, she turned with him as he drew her from the noise and down into a back hallway.

“Ahsoka,” he said, as if savouring her name. “I’m unsure why the stars have aligned as they have, but I’d not squander it. Would you permit me —”

It sounded like the crowd was about to riot, the roar deafening.

Maul hesitated, looking left — then back to her. Unsettled by something she couldn’t guess at, he drew her around as if he might shield her from his brawling bandmates. A furtive look to her hand, he swallowed, and glanced over her shoulder in the opposite direction.

Her fingers rested over his. He had not let go over her, despite the blood — like a string that bound them, a small trickle of thread between the fingers.

“I’ve a first aid kit in my trailer.”

And Ahsoka thought of Anakin and his good advice:

Don’t do what I wouldn’t do, as if the double negative was some sort of saving grace.

She thought of her teenage years drawing to a close without fanfare, the sweat sticking her teeshirt to her back, the early hours in the morning where she buried her face in her pillow with her hands between her legs, trying desperately to rid herself of the feeling of his lingering gaze — wondering if he could imagine what she was doing to herself while thinking of him, alone in the dark somewhere else.

Absent successes.

No future.

Nihilism.

There was an intensity to him that she’d expected — a heated focus that kept him rapt and too-near, too intimate, as if the urgency of the moment might be dispelled on a breath. She found it wasn’t a moment she wanted to lose, the vulnerability of it all as sudden and ephemeral as a tendril of smoke.

She wanted to know how, at a look, he’d left her so undone. She wanted to know, real or imagined, if lightning had struck.

Ahsoka stepped around him, tugging him after her with a glance over her shoulder.

“Let’s go.”

—

You are a goddess, and I am a blissful, blundering lamb at your heel.

An idiot heathen.

A master who forgot that he was a mere mortal in the presence of the divine.

A fool. Foolish fool. Foolhardy. Strung up by the ankle for not seeing the snare at his feet, and deservedly so, I’m certain.

I hope you like tea.

I find it steadies the nerves.

—

Uncertain of what to expect, the homey, wood-panelled trailer hitch with its tiny kitchenette and little dining area piled with paperbacks was the last thing she expected.

Also, it was beige.

Also, it looked like it belonged to someone else, and Maul was just squatting, if a squatter folded their laundry into neat piles organized by varying shades of black.

“Tea?” he offered, already moving to the tiny countertop and the state-of-the-art electric kettle that let him choose the water temperature he wanted.

Ahsoka found herself turning on the spot as Maul got a second mug for her. It had a photo of a squash-faced pug on the front of it, and the word “Paul” emblazoned in Curlz MT at the bottom with several little hearts decorating the name.

He pushed a few stacks aside on the table, and thinking better of it, offered her a seat on the couch instead. That too, required clearing. More books.

Matheson. King. Priest. Rice. Tremblay. Malfi. Neville. Hill. Jackson. Stoker. Brontë.

Brontë?

“Wuthering Heights.” He cleared his throat, watching her turn over the cover. “I --“ He trailed off, then huffed a laugh. “I suppose I like the atmosphere of gothic fiction.”

Silence descended, and it occurred to her that, given the state of the place, he wasn’t accustomed to company. The thought seemed to take up more space than they could afford, so when Ahsoka tried to put together the pieces of a disparate life outside the regular curve, it seemed to make so much less sense than it should have.

It was so much more quiet.

Loneliness fit itself into crevices, widening those narrow spaces so that it felt like you didn’t have much room to move once it settled. You might be in a room filled with friends, but find yourself suffocating for all the hollows that you already carried with you.

He set the mug down before her, and Ahsoka’s heart gave a little squeeze.

“Maul?”

Her hand ached, but she found that her heart did too.

“Right,” he said. “Sorry.”

Breathy. Nervous?

The sex god from the night before remained a presence beneath his skin — lingering in the way he held himself, in the cut of his clothes, in his carriage, but she’d surprised him, Ahsoka realized. In doing so, it occurred to her that she’d done something unprecedented — something Maul hadn’t expected, and it left him unguarded:

She’d come back.

Maul crouched, rummaging beneath the sink. A small plastic first aid kid hit the counter, and a bag of edamame from the freezer.

Ahsoka looked at his collection of horror novels, his poetry, his few possessions, and dispelled the idea of the man in favour of the man she found. A small smile threatened at the discovery of his sketchbook buried beneath a newspaper, the latest thing he’d worked on familiar to her in that it appeared her gaze was a study in blue.

He glanced up at her, and turned away. “I could —”

She stopped him, joining him at the sink as she pulled up her sleeve. He watched her rinse it. He offered her paper towel to pat it dry, and waited, tucked in next to her as she flipped the latch in silence. A glance, and he tore his gaze from her face to dig through the kit for the gauze and tape — their communication edged with something careful and quiet, dictated by the angle of their bodies in proximity to one another, drawing steadily closer.

Interest. Tension knotted and strange, but curious.

Light touches with gentle fingers.

He sipped his tea and she watched his mouth, and he watched her with that same intensity that curled low and warm, drawing her closer to him — putting them within each other’s orbits.

A dish towel wrapped the bag, and he touched it to her bandaged hand, holding her fingers steady in case it hurt, and that’s how Ahsoka found the toes of their sneakers side by side by side, their knees brushing — his breath against her lips like an invitation laced with peppermint.

No music compelled her.

Just him. Just the feeling that there was something inevitable about it all, and she’d never be satisfied if she never knew for certain: the shape of whatever it was that sat between them, compelling them to silence when there might’ve been so many things they could have said.

She smiled into it, blushing, and drew back from him — pulling him after her down that narrow corridor to the space at the back where he hadn’t made his bed.

“Bring the book,” she said, because that flutter in her stomach was back, and because his fingers were warm and calloused against hers. She wanted to know what they’d sound like turning those pages.

—

I like seeing you step on the heels of your sneakers to ease them off your feet before you crawl into my bed. I like the way your discoveries reveal my notebooks and my favourite pen, photographs and trinkets — small bits of my portable existence fit into a temporary space for a transient heart.

Your surprise is the soft-glow of delight.

Am I not what you expected?

Am I better, beside you, where it feels so uncanny to tuck you into my pillows and under my arm, where the ringing in our ears is just a background hum for our hearts.

You smell like everything I’ve never deserved.

“Read to me,” you say. “I like the sound of your voice.”

Sometimes I summon devils with my song, I think — and sometimes angels fall.

—

Curled into Maul, her cheek on his chest, listening to him recite a story about a child adopted but never accepted, his only driver his thirst for revenge, she rested her hand on his stomach, watching the rise and fall of his breathing.

He fell silent after a time, his lips turning against her forehead to murmur, “Your heart’s been hammering this entire time.”

She shut her eyes a bit longer than a standard blink.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she admitted.

He dragged his hand in a slow stroke, up and down her arm. Turning into her, his mouth at her cheek, she felt the curve of his smile.

“I suspect that’s the question we all ask ourselves.”

She huffed a laugh, her fingers tracing the lines beneath his shirt, her body responding to the way those muscles flexed when she said something that amused him.

“I meant in the literal, moment to moment.”

“So did I.” He set the book down on his thigh, freeing a hand to run a thumb along the crest of her index finger. “Moments are all I have. I suspect these few we have right here are stolen.”

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she admitted.

He agreed with a small noise of surprise. “I’m not terribly upset that it did. I only wish that there might be more time to better understand —” he trailed off. “Well.”

It felt like the afterglow of something that had already happened, when nothing had happened at all between them. Not even a kiss, save for the one that he pressed to her forehead.

His breathing hitched — the only sign that he must have been as nervous as she was.

“Given the choice, this is how I’d spend most my nights,” he said.

“A cup of tea and a book.”

His mouth lingered near her temple, contemplating.

It was barely a whisper: “Closer to you.”

She tipped her face up to find his gaze drawn to some far-away place she couldn’t reach, but knew of intimately:

It looked like a small trailer in a strange city, after-hours when the lights were dimmed and the crowds had dispersed. It was her empty apartment, the television on just to fill the silence with something.

He caught her staring.

“You could be closer.”

His sigh shuddered on the exhale, but it was Ahsoka who pulled herself up to him, her lips brushing his with a brevity that surprised him into stillness.

She pulled back, shocked to have breached that last divide —

“I’m sorry,” she managed. “That was a moment, and I have a bad habit of —“

But the darkness that clouded Maul’s expression had nothing to do with taking something that wasn’t hers, and everything to do with a precedent that hadn’t stopped simmering though they’d said nothing about it.

When he followed her mouth, settling her back against his arm, his kiss eased her open to him with a warmth and insistence that spread through her chest to her stomach and left her reaching for his face, an intimacy to it that left her surprised and quaking — such a stark contrast to how she thought it might be to find herself in his arms.

The book forgotten, pages fluttering, his hand followed — tracing a heated path down her neck, between her breasts and to her midriff to pull her teeshirt from her skin.

Ahsoka shuddered with the demand of that touch, the callouses on Maul’s fingers a soothing rake that left her gasping, opening her mouth to his tongue and the taste of him, filling her slowly.

His hand found her knee, pressing her legs apart and sliding up her jeans to the apex of her thighs — warmth through the fabric, fingers sliding higher in exploration over her clothes.

Rubbing in a slow circle, he drew back enough to look down at her, his fingers working over the button, drawing open the zipper with a little hiss.

He murmured into her mouth, “When I saw you in the alley last night, I wanted you to know every ounce of frustration I felt; every indignant little twist of the knife I felt at your criticism. I wanted to leave you a puddled mess at the end of the show — because then you would know what every note and every word has taken from me, waiting for you.”

Ahsoka sucked in a breath, gripping at his shirt with her fists as he laved a line from her collarbone to her ear, taking her lobe between his teeth briefly. He nosed her cheek, breathing his next words into her ear, “And I have been waiting a very long time for you, my dear. I’ve spent lives waiting in the dark, alone — quiet nights and too early mornings in solitude, wondering when it would change; dead sober, dead drunk, in grief, and out of it — longing to know who it was that I was missing all the while. And I didn’t know your name, so who might I have called for?”

He drew down her panties, and she parted for him as he slipped his hand into her jeans, notching the heel of his thumb against her nerves and slipping inside her with such ease that she shuddered. Ahsoka arched her back, and Maul stilled at the knuckle.

Her eyes fluttered open. “You don’t have to wait anymore,” she breathed.

Half-lidded, he looked her over, and nodding, he breathed a small, satisfied noise of triumph. “Good.”

And when he next slanted his mouth over hers, it was as patient as his first kiss — as if he had all the time in the world with her to make her understand just how much trouble she was in for taking so long to find him.


	3. Sunday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the tags have changed to reflect the explicit sexual content in this chapter.

**-**   
**SUNDAY**   
**-**

  
  
Morning dawns and the quiet’s changed.

I am so used to the demarcations made by sound and its absence, that those rhythms govern my waking and sleeping and working, and everything in between. It’s approaching six, and all I can do is listen to the sound of your breathing, here, beside me, and mourn for its absent cadence when you leave.

Pittsburgh, next.

Foxboro, after.

The show goes on.

Different town.

Different stage.

Same silence.

I memorize the sound of my sheets against your skin. I commit to memory every sigh, whisper, and plea from your lips. I carve your laughter on my soul so that I might not drown another night, learning what could be and knowing what it costs to lose.

Let’s not say goodbye, my love.

My Ahsoka.

—

At ten thirty, her forehead pressed into the tile of the shower in her apartment, her hand out of the spray to keep the bandages dry, Ahsoka tapped her nail on the grout in a rhythm that matched the one thing she’d committed to memory.

A steady beat.

The most important one.

She swallowed thickly, the weight of things as they were as suffocating as that mosh pit.

If she closed her eyes, she could make herself believe that she still felt his touch —

_Hands bracketing her hips, his thumb strumming her tighter, higher, faster into a rhythm that built around his mouth. His tongue curved into the folds of her sex, one leg pinned at his shoulder while he pressed his face deeper into bliss — his fingers easing deep and slow inside her to better prepare her for how he’d stretch her body around him._

_Sure hands. A deft touch._

_Maul fucked her as slow and surely with his hands as he did his mouth, his tongue keen to learn the language of her sighs and shudders, unwilling to let up once he’d started._

_When Ahsoka couldn’t take it anymore, she tugged apart the zipper of his hoodie as he climbed over her, pulling his teeshirt up and off one-handed, and crying out in surprise at the brief loss of skin-on-skin contact when he lifted off of her._

_He rolled her shirt up her ribs, hands grazing skin, nails dragging as she arched upward to help but found her wrists notched between his fingers, pressed into the pillows above her head so that she fell open to him, immobilized and straining when he put his teeth to her ear and murmured, “When you were thinking of me last night, alone in your room, did you sing for me the way you are now, when I touch you?”_

_The insides of her knees scraped his belt, trying to pull him closer, but Maul held back._

_Ahsoka whimpered, her cheek razing the stubble along his jaw, and closing her eyes too briefly as if to memorize the feel of their nearness, she breathed a broken, “No,” in two syllables._

_He released her wrists, softening, and with a frown looked down to find that she’d squeezed a tear from the corner of her eye._

_It trickled down to the mattress, but she met his gaze with a boldness she didn’t feel._

_“Ahsoka?”_

_On a shaky breath, she admitted, helpless, “I couldn’t make myself come just thinking about you. That’s why —” She swallowed. “It’s part of the reason —”_

_“You came back to me,” he breathed, lowering himself. Maul kissed the tear away, following its path with the tip of a finger. He searched her face, a small smile threatening as he ducked into her neck, fluttering a kiss to her throat. She whimpered at the ripple of sensation that spread from that point, curling into him, desperate to feel more of him as he collected her body in those strong arms and she gave herself over to his kiss._

_“Tell me what you need, my Lady,” he said against her mouth, easing her to his lips as he drew her up to him, pliant and needy, as he licked his way across her collarbones._

_“Maul.” She breathed a laugh, the pad of his thumb running a line beneath her breast and down her ribs. Such delicate ministrations left her puddling for him, a warm stupor leaving her close to begging._

_“Say my name once more.”_

_Those fingers trailed down her thigh, pulling her over his hip and against him._

_“Maul,” she sighed. “Maul would you please —”_

_He licked into her mouth, a smile threatening as he dragged his tongue against hers and withdrew._

_“Yes, love?”_

_Her fingers found his belt buckle, and she fumbled at it._

_Maul sank his teeth into the soft spot beneath her ear, and she cried out — sensation blooming hot at hard at the bite of pain mingled with a shivering so impossible that she clenched at the fingers he’d slipped between her legs once more, the thumb pressed to her clit._

_“You’re so wet.”_

_“Maul,” she sobbed. “Please fuck me, Maul.”_

_He growled._

_“‘Please give me your cock, Maul,’” he instructed._

_“Please give me your cock, Maul.”_

_“‘I need to come on your cock, Maul.’”_

_Ahsoka cried out, clutching at his wrist, bucking against the pressure that wasn’t nearly enough._

_“Say it,” he purred._

_She gasped,”I need to come on your cock, Maul.”_

_He slid beneath her hands, helping her with the business of his trappings one-handed while she rut against him, clutching his arm, her hips moving of their own volition. Sobbing into his arm in desperation, she almost caught the angle she needed, her desire spooled tight as she rode his hand._

_“Good girl,” he purred, helping her wind herself tighter, the curve of his fingers beckoning her to new heights, tense to the point of breaking. “Take what you need, my dear. My sweet girl.” He kissed her again. “Let daddy give you what you need.”_

Ahsoka shut off the spray, her body ticking like an overheated engine, sleeplessness and the surreal feeling that it was over before it even started an unreality she couldn’t quite hold on to. It kept slipping through her fingers when she tried to grasp it, but making a fist, she could still feel his fingers laced through hers.

She turned the water to freezing, trying to shock herself out of whatever lingering impressions the night left on her: the feeling of his body clung to her limbs like she was wreathed in cigarette smoke. Fading, but persistent, and when she closed her eyes she could see his smile, and feel the rhythm of their bodies moving together — no simple melody — but unlike anything she’d ever known just the same.

Like he was a song that she couldn’t get out of her head.

Ahsoka squeezed her eyes shut, trying to bite back the urge to cry.

In a world in which she and Maul might linger on the same track for the brief time they could play it out, she’d gladly give herself to the fantasy of it. That’s all it really was, she reasoned: a moment. They’d had… a moment.

Reality, though sluggish, wouldn’t let them pause for longer than that.

There wasn’t to be any repeats.

And no sooner than it had happened, it was over. On to the next thing on the playlist:

For him, that meant wherever the tour took him. For her —

Ahsoka wiped at her face, finding the streak of tears down her cheeks too hot in the cold spray.

“Fuck,” she managed, and thought of putting her fist into the tile to divert the hurt.

She didn’t. She wanted to preserve at least one functioning hand.

Shutting off the tap, she laughed, still crying, and sniffed at how stupid the world was and if she truly weighed the alternative possibilities:

She wasn’t stuck. It just… kept on going.

Next track.

Whether she liked it or not.

The problem was: she’d _really_ liked it.

_“Condom,” she gasped into his mouth._

_‘Biceps’ was what she was actually processing. Biceps and pectorals and the ridges of his abdominals — the v of his sex lines and the thick weight of his cock brushing her thigh. The small drop of pre-come on the tip and how hard he was; how hot and heavy, and how much trouble she was having with one of his thighs between hers, and how he slid her past his knee to press against the exact spot she needed him as he kissed her — those brief movements of his leg a wide point of friction for her to grind against._

_A kiss that wasn’t a kiss._

_A kiss that was his tongue caressing mewls from her mouth; gasps and sighs and plaintive noises, his hands everywhere — wide palms and thick fingers, the tips edged with calluses, running shivery and hot across her skin. Playing her. Bringing her higher. Making her feel like she was some small, fragile thing in his embrace and he needed to treat her with a firm sort of tenderness lest she break apart for him too soon._

_His hands in her hair left her shivering, goosebumps spreading as he wouldn’t cease and wouldn’t let her come and just tucked her against his body and smiled when she shuddered for him, begging him, “Please,” over and over until, soft and near-incoherent with need, he pulled away long enough to roll from her._

_Ahsoka cried out, the loss of contact too much, and he cupped a hand to her chin, caressing her cheek with a thumb._

_“Condom,” he agreed, and she nearly wept with relief._

_Eyes half-slivered, the delirium of lust settling on her, her fingers found his collarbone — his throat, touching ever so gently — her movements clumsy._

_Maul flashed a grin in the gloom, but there was something that lacked all reassurance about it._

_“I don’t —” he began, shuffling things on a shelf. He sat up fully and Ahsoka processed that something was dreadfully wrong._

_Frowning, Maul shook his head. He looked at her, truly — searching her face._

_“I never bring anyone back,” he said by way of explanation. “So I never keep them on hand —”_

_It plucked at her heartstrings to know she wasn’t a notch for him, but still. CONDOM._

_“Maul,” she managed. “My pants. Back pocket —”_

_He searched her features and she shoved at him, open-handed —_

_“Now!”_

_He found her jeans, extracting the packets she’d brought with her, tossing the spares to the mattress, and returning to her with one in hand._

_She took it from him, pulling him to her with furtive insistence. He obliged, pushing away the sheets to fall to her side — some fallen angel whose likeness might’ve been carved in marble and set out in a museum somewhere. He hesitated, and she reached for him, drawing him close, her mouth finding his again and kissing him as if the moments apart had been more torture than having to wait for him to return to her._

_Maul smiled against her teeth, repositioning her legs around his waist as she tore at the packaging._

_Shaking as she reached for him, he stilled her hand, guiding her to his length and wrapping his hand around hers to keep his cock steady as she pinched out the tip of the rubber._

_Ahsoka shivered as he kissed her cheek, her temple._

_“Are you nervous?”_

_“N-no.”_

_“Ahsoka —”_

_She whimpered._

_“I can’t think straight,” she whispered._

_He chuckled, helping her position the condom, groaning as she rolled it down his length successfully._

_“Thank you,” he said, catching her mouth with his own, tender this time. “I promise, I’ll take care of you.”_

_When Maul moved to lay her back, gathering her to him as he parted her legs carefully, he sank down to a hip and positioned himself before her — slicking the head of his cock with her arousal and leaving her shuddering in desperation._

_“Slow, okay?” he said. “If it’s too much, say ‘pineapple’.”_

_“Too much?” She searched him, not understanding._

_Maul’s throat worked. He nodded. “Too hard, too rough, too dirty —“_

_He must have seen her surprise registering — innocence too easily conveyed in look. The word ‘dirty’ resonated, leaving her breathing a little more shallowly._

_“Okay?” he asked._

_She licked her lips._

_“Sure?”_

_Her mouth had gone dry, but other parts of her —_

_Ahsoka made a tiny, desperate noise of agreement._

_— Other parts of her were soaked._

_“Ahsoka.” There was a note of concern bordering on warning in those three syllables._

_She puffed a breath, heat rising to her cheeks. Looking down, he caught her chin, tipping her towards him._

_Her gaze fell to his mouth, thinking of the faint taste of her juices that she could still smell on his upper lip — that salty-sweet hint of nectar. She thought of his fingers inside her, his mouth wrapped around her nipple, and glancing down at everything else he offered her body, she sucked in a little breath._

_“I think I like it dirty,” she whispered._

_Maul’s gaze darkened._

_Breathing harder, she reached down, gripping him gently._

_Hoarse, his voice lowered to a deeper register, he murmured, “I like hearing you tell me what pleasures you.”_

_Lightheaded, she stole a breath, his lips brushing hers._

_“I like it when you talk to me,” she said. “I like it when you —“ she swallowed, her eyes fluttering shut as he eased himself from her hand._

_“Do you think you’ll like my cock inside you?” he murmured._

_Quaking, she gripped his sides, a ripple of heat blooming outwards from her centre. He left her shaking, slicking himself through her folds._

_Ahsoka’s eyes fluttered shut, arching a little into the feeling to take more of him, though he held back._

_“I think you should find out for certain,” he said, so quiet she barely heard him about her hammering heart._

_She nodded, breathing a laugh, and he eased over her — the weight of him sinking them into the bed as he pressed forward, pushing into her a little, letting her adjust to his size._

_It burned, at first — feeling herself stretch to accommodate the thickest part of him. Maul made a noise into her throat, and eased forward a little more, his hips canting forward, letting her adjust to the breadth of everything he wanted to give her._

_“You’re so tight,” he managed, strangled, and Ahsoka clutched him to her, her eyes squeezed shut, her body throbbing around him._

_“Does it hurt?”_

_She shook her head. “It’s not my first time,” she managed. “But —”_

_He drew up to look at her, searching her features._

_Almost apologetically, she whispered, “You’re really big.”_

_Smiling, he kissed her again, parting her lips for him with a sweep of his tongue, giving her a moment to relax into it._

_He drew back. “Okay?”_

_She touched his face, breathless, and nodded._

_In one swift thrust, Maul buried himself to the hilt inside her so that she clenched at him, her gasp crystalline in the quiet. She arched upwards, fingernails digging into his arms, her breathing snuffed to silence._

_“You took it all, though,” he murmured, a smile in his voice. “You good girl.”_

_Mouth falling open, Ahsoka gasped at the sensation of being overly full, her pussy clenching involuntarily, orgasm threatening. She rocked against him, her head falling back, choking out a sob as she clutched at his neck._

_All the while, Maul remained still, watching her writhe beneath him — as solid and as unforgiving as a stone._

_“Look at you,” he breathed. “Practically coming and I’ve hardly touched you at all.”_

_She gasped, unable to move her hips fully with him pinning her. Legs quaking, she might’ve climbed him for all the good it did._

_Maul leaned in, breathing into her ear. “What are you going to do, love?”_

_“I’m going to come on your cock,” she gasped._

_“That’s right,” he purred, easing from her and slipping back in._

_She rocked her hips forward, groaning._

_“Do you like it?” he whispered._

_“Maul,” she whined. “So good, Maul.”_

_He rolled his hips, stretching her out, thrusting a little to get her used to the feeling._

_“Fuck —”_

_His breath, so hot against her ear, left her shivering. “Such a filthy little mouth.”_

_“Fuck me, please --“_

_He grinned, tipping her face to his and purring as he began, “With pleasure.”_

Her phone’s screen lit, rattling around the coffee table with the sort of persistence that meant Anakin was sending multiple texts in a row. There wasn’t any reason for her heart to stall. It wouldn’t have been Maul. She hadn’t given him her number. She’d taken his.

And yet some sick part of her traitor’s heart wanted to backflip just in case.

Ahsoka towelled at her hair, stalking over to the couch, and eyeing the message preview.

While she might’ve washed the sleep crust from her eyes, her body carried the fuzzy after-effects of a night without sleep, her body carting around the aches of everything she wouldn’t forget, and her heart? Maybe she’d forget how heavy it was if she put it in a shoebox and shoved it under her bed where she wouldn’t have to continue prodding at it.

Like there was anything she could do about it anyway.

_I’m sorry this is so last minute, Snips._

The most recent text glared at her, and frowning, she snatched it up and tossed herself onto the couch, her damp hair forgotten.

She thumbed open no less than ten messages, replete with a combination of spelling mistakes and syntactical errors that made deciphering his meaning near-impossible.

Finally, the phone jumping in her hand, Anakin called her instead.

“Don’t you answer your messages anymore?” he demanded.

“I took your advice,” she said instead of justifying his question with a direct response.

“What.” He sounded irritable.

“I didn’t do what you wouldn’t do.”

Silence.

“So you did do what I would do?”

“Didn’t say that I didn’t.”

“This is really confusing. Look, I’ve got to tell you something — oh shit, hold on.”

Muffled, Ahsoka thought she could hear Padme in the background.

“Hello?”

“You don’t sound so good, Skyguy.”

“Me? You’re hoarse. Were you screaming all night?”

Heat spread from her collar upwards. Gingerly, Ahsoka rubbed at her temple. “Yes, mom.”

“Okay, whatever — I’m glad you had a good time. Here’s the thing I was trying to tell you that you were ignoring all morning. You know how I said I wouldn’t be going on tour right at this very second, because that would be insane?”

Her heart chugged and sank.

“Yeah, well, apparently I don’t know how the music industry works at all, because there’s a rapid track to things, and they want me to fill in an opening slot on the tour as a surprise guest to see how the billing feels; to see how the crowd responds.”

She could almost hear him shaking his head.

Silence fell, the static in her ears leaving her oddly numb.

“Obi-Wan was okay with that?”

“Yep! It was Obi-Wan’s idea. Padme’s going to meet up with us in Seattle next week.”

In the background, she heard Padme say, “Hi Ahsoka!”

It occurred to her that Anakin was leaving. It occurred to her that Anakin might be leaving right _now_. That day.

“So?” he asked. “What do you think?”

Each hammer of her heart echoed the certain cruelty of it all: that the only people she could think of would be so far away in less than twenty-four hours.

She sniffed, but tried for a smile.

“That’s great.” It didn’t sound great. It sounded like a part of her was withering slowly and painfully and she was forced to watch it happen.

She thought of Maul in the early hours, eyes-half closed with that small, satisfied smirk on his face, pretending to be asleep beside her.

Tapping the arm of the couch in that unending rhythm, she could recall the exact cadence of their hearts pressed together, chest to chest, breathing even.

“‘Sokes?” He paused. “You’re not excited. Why aren’t you excited. I mean, I get it — you just _love_ your barista job and everything, but —”

She stopped him, confused. “What?”

“Did you even read my messages?” Anakin pressed.

Ahsoka thought of Maul’s eyes in the dim pre-dawn, aglow with some unspoken emotion as he rolled into her again, his grin lighting the darkness for a flash before he kissed her once more.

That rhythm between them — unforgettable — a song played so loud it could drown out everything else.

Ahsoka frowned at her phone, switching screens to go back to Anakin’s texts while he continued talking at her from a distance. She barely made out the words, the record skipping a little in surprise, kicking up a snare and becoming a staccato as she rose from the couch.

She licked her lips, turning on the spot in her empty, quiet apartment, trying to assess what she’d miss and arrived at the conclusion: nothing at all.

_Supporting himself on his elbows, his mouth next to her ear, his thrusts nothing more than abbreviated parries — Maul spoke to her as he sank sweet and hard to her centre, over and over, pulling out and easing back again to brush against the place where she needed him most, but stopping just short. Involuntarily, her body clutched at him, trying to hold on, but Maul was stronger than even her pussy, it seemed, and the thought that he was edging her even further left her panting, making promises, and whining his name —_

_At first she tried to hold on, but he pulled her arms through to set them over her head, his rhythm unbroken as he rolled his hips into hers._

_“Like this?” he breathed, and the sensation of that damp heat against the shell of her ear left her shivering, her skin alight beneath his body, every brush her her nipples against his chest tantalizing._

_He put his mouth to the soft juncture of her neck and chin, licking a heated trail to her lobe where he bit down, and she arched into him._

_“Feels good —“ she managed. “Feels so fucking —“_

_Muffled into her throat, he muttered, pumping harder, “You’re so fucking tight, Ahsoka.”_

_The slick glide of his cock eased her into a rhythm that followed his, and if she angled her hips just so —_

_He groaned, his hand snaking beneath her shoulder blades, pulling her up to meet him._

_“Harder,” she begged._

_A hand sank into her hair, gripping her closest to the scalp, sending tingles from the point of contact as he arched her upwards, her breasts to his mouth._

_“Wider,” he breathed, tongue searing across her nipple._

_She obliged, opening herself to him further, letting him sink deeper with a groan._

_“Good.” Maul loosed his grip a little, soothing her, rubbing her scalp, leaving her pliant and tingling for him as his thrusts slapped their skin together. Pulling her into him by the hips, he set himself at an angle, one knee beneath her thigh so that each thrust could strike at her clit._

_Ahsoka opened her mouth, her cry strangled, as he chuckled._

_That sound, so self-satisfied, so certain that she_ liked _it, had her clenching around him —_

_Groaning his pleasure, Maul reached for her face. There was a warning in it when he said in dangerous tones, “Look at me.”_

_He speared her lips with his thumb, her eyes fluttering open._

_“Suck.”_

_Ahsoka whimpered, her tongue wrapping the digit as she sealed her lips around him. He watched her, unyielding, everything inside her winding tighter at the look in his eyes:_

_Possessive, heated to burning._

_He breathed, “Are you holding back for me, love?”_

_She couldn’t speak around his thumb, and when she tried, he pressed down a little on her tongue._

_“No matter. Good girls come when they’re told they can. Don’t they?”_

_He withdrew, slipping from her mouth and her cunt with an ease that left her crying out — bereft and imperfect and addled as he tipped her to her side and over beneath him._

_He eased her legs apart, her knees settled into the mattress, and embraced her from behind with a smile as he sank into her once more to the hilt._

_His balls struck her clit — a sharp little tap that had her seizing up around him._

_“Not yet, Ahsoka,” he purred, withdrawing a little and easing back into her, pushing her into the mattress._

_A muffled curse — nearly crying out in desperation. Her legs trembled from the effort, weakened by the strain of being so near the edge._

_Softly, he said, “I have you. I’ve got you.”_

_Bracing her across the sternum, she whimpered at the errant thought that she liked being the little spoon, and being cradled so close to him as she let him lower her to his sheets was kind of rough intimacy that left her feeling safe, feeling his stubble raze her shoulder, his fingers running down her forearms, the heat and hardness of him leaving her small and delicate in his arms._

So _turned on._ So _desperate to come._

_Maul whispered, “Okay? You’re mumbling —”_

_“No,” she managed, near tears._

_He stopped, drawing away enough to press her hair back from her face, concern marking him._

_Ahsoka sobbed, “Why are you stopping? Maul, please — god — please Maul --“_

_“Oh,” he chuckled and squeezed her to him, finding the notch between her thighs with his free hand. “I’m sorry, my dear.”_

_“Fuck Maul — you fucking tease — oh. Oh —”_

_He pressed against the swollen bud of her sex — that magical node of nerves that he wanted to spite her with, apparently — and taking it between the edge of his two fingers, swirled it into a tight, sharp circle that left her trying to crush his cock with her body._

_“Feel so good —“ she gasped._

_Ahsoka bucked, and he pressed her back down, holding her in place with his hips as she turned her face into his pillow and swore at him, calling him a string of obscenities that left him laughing, seizing up beneath him, her legs shuddering under the contemplative way that he fucked her ever so gently with such shallow thrusts that only brushed the spot she needed, and howled his name like she might curse his entire family._

_“We have all night,” he promised, soothing her, touching her lovingly as he eased her knees further apart, withdrawing again as if he’d leave her at the very tipping point before he snapped those two fingers into action. “And I want you to spill over me again and again.”_

_“Please,” she begged, pushing back into him. “I can’t take much more of this.”_

_“Well,” he breathed. “Since you’ve been so nice about it —”_

_And then he was_ fucking _her — his hand at the back of her neck, her hips rising to meet his as he wound her clit in sharp little circles that had her entire body pulled taut and fragile and silent with shuddering need —_

_He breathed into her ear, “Come for me, Ahsoka. Do it now.”_

_The only noise she managed was the staggered gasp of surprise as her release slammed into her, her body quaking with Maul’s thrusts as he followed her over with a long, satisfied groan, their bodies crushed together into the mattress where he pinned her, dragging out her pleasure. Unyielding, she bucked into his hand, her second catching her as quickly, leaving her howling his name — her body rigid with pleasure as the wave dragged her under again._

_Spots danced across her vision, leaving her blinking back the lightheaded, fuzzy feeling of wanting to pass out. She thought she might’ve gone limp, but she could feel the pulse of Maul’s cock as he came inside her, still hard as a rock._

_He made a noise into her shoulder, and Ahsoka’s answering whimper ended in an exasperated, high-pitched chuckle._

_Maul shuddered, lifting himself, the sweat of their skin glueing them together as she turned her face left and purred something incoherent that might’ve been, “Thank you,” or possibly, “You’ll get yours.”_

_He laughed anyway, slipping from her but catching her hand to lace his fingers through hers. The snap of the condom coming off followed. From the waist, he looped an arm around to drag her against him, folding her into his chest and tangling their legs together._

_Spent, she furrowed her brow at him, addled by the echoes of pleasure in her limbs, dulled to a low roar that left her heaving and clumsy and feeling so, so nice. Maul thumbed the spot between her eyes, working out the wrinkles of consternation, breathing hard but still smiling._

_She mumbled into his palm, “You’re a dead man.”_

_And he grinned. “You’d bring me back to life,” and squeezed her bum._

_Ahsoka growled, still breathing hard, even as the first flutters of that touch became an easy caress — their fingers still locked together over their heads._

_—_

Absent gods and absent friends, I watch the world go by. The interstate is a barren stretch of corn fields and wheat fields and endless trees, exists leading to truck stops and fast food chains bursting in little patches along the way.

There’s no spell to it. No glory.

I can stare out the window for hours at the vast swatches of nothing, the drone of Sid talking on his phone a background hum I can ignore — making plans, making deals as the world moves on.

Yet I linger somewhere back in time, and if I close my eyes I can almost feel you —

And I wonder, if I can keep that steady rhythm in mind, humming along to our song, could I work that magic again and bring you to me in the near-reaches of a future where the impossible is only a dream that can be made real with the right sort of callous determination that makes bedfellows of strangers whose hearts sing to each other across so much desolation —

I take a breath.

I swear my hands remember the shape of your body beneath mine.

I’m thinking of quitting the band.

I’m thinking of quitting the band.

I’m smiling as I start humming to myself, words to a song that only you and I know.

It’s a tune I can sing to, my guitar propped under my elbow, a knee draped off the arm of my chair.

I’m making up the words to myself when Sid sets down his phone on the table top, and says, “Stop that caterwauling, Maul.”

You’re in my bones.

You’re under my skin.

My dark ritual girl — did you know that making music with me was a compact?

Oh, Ahsoka.

Call me a selfish man, but all I’m asking of you is forever.

I think I’m going to quit the band.

—

_Slower the second time, Maul eased their bodies together. Less frantic, more metered, but somnolent and heavy — letting the hollows between them fill with a quiet sort of intimacy; her tummy touching his, their thighs brushing, the little inlets where they might not’ve connected coming together so that no empty pockets were left when he kissed her._

_Ahsoka’s hands stroked over the back of his head, and he purred against her mouth, fingers slipping up the back of her neck and around her waist with a sigh._

_“Can I —” she began._

_He slit those gold eyes open, his mouth moving against hers._

_An answer in murmurs: “It only hurt to put them under the skin.”_

_He pulled her leg over his hip, the lines around his mouth at ease as he watched her exploration._

_“Touch me,” he said, stoking her from back to thigh and up again. “You’ve lovely hands.”_

_She shuddered a breath, and biting her lip, slipped her fingers through the valleys made by his horns._

_Maul’s eyes fluttered shut a moment, his breath falling to a sigh._

_The expansion of his chest into hers tickled against her breasts, and he pressed her into him a little more firmly in appreciation._

_“Did they hurt?” she whispered._

_He brushed his lower lip against hers, eyes still closed, murmuring something pleasant about the way she stroked him._

_“No anaesthetic,” he agreed, lifting his brows. “Not the most comfortable experience.”_

_She dragged a fingertip over a bump, finding it only a smooth notch that the skin moved over._

_He smirked against her, and she felt the stirring of his interest against her inner thigh._

_“You like this?” she asked quietly, as if it were a secret._

_“I like that you want to touch me — I like that it doesn’t scare you.”_

_Exhaling, Ahsoka frowned. She touched his cheek, her fingers finding the markings there, running over them as if he’d turned his skin into a canvas for his art._

_“I’m a sideshow freak, my lady. My image is a product meant to cultivate intimidation — to warn people off. To sell records.”_

_Her breath caught. “But —“_

_He opened his eyes, sensing her struggle — her pain._

_Ahsoka frowned. “But you’re beautiful,” she breathed._

_Maul stilled, seized into inaction for a beat as if she’d slapped him._

_She touched his face, her thumb caressing his jaw. “Maul?”_

_He blinked, returning to her, his brows furrowed, not understanding or not knowing what to do —_

_“I’m the product of managerial tampering,” he said. “I’m noth—”_

_He stopped himself from telling her the awful truth:_

_He was nothing. It hung there — that unfinished word that seemed to gather strength from everything he tried to deny, every night on stage, his persona bigger than who he could ever be._

_The press of their bodies revealed how it affected him, the thump of her heart meeting his pound for pound._

_Her voice didn’t break, though she searched his gaze as if willing some sort of power into the words he hadn’t known he’d needed to hear:_

_“You’re_ mine _.”_

_Blinking away the sting, it took him a moment to register the bite of pain from her fingernails sinking into his scalp._

_“Maul,” she said, more firmly this time._

_And as if something clicked — some missing piece of a puzzle falling into place — he let out a long, shaking breath. He stared, searching her for some lie and finding none, he nodded once, hiding the tremors he felt by pressing his forehead to hers. Squeezed his eyes shut until the feeling passed. She held him all the while, crushing them together as if to rid him of any lingering doubt._

_“Yours,” he agreed, hoarse._

_She kissed him, then, her lips hard against his in the struggle to keep herself strong for him._

_Sniffing, she did it again._

_And again until his grip on her eased, and she let out a small pant of relief against his mouth when he kissed her back at last._

_She puffed a laugh, blinking rapidly as he traced the path of a tear from her cheek._

_“No more of that for tonight.”_

_He tipped her face to his gently, the crackle of plastic barely audible in the hush as he pressed her lips open for him with his tongue. He held her to him as he moved his hips back from her, the slightest movements the only indicator that he’d found another condom. When he eased back against her, there was no hesitation when he found her once more — as if he’d marked his place in a favourite book — the hardness and heat of him filling up everything that had been missing before._

_Maul kissed her nose, her cheeks, the tips of each brow, and drew her against him with newfound familiarity._

_“Slower this time?” she asked into his skin, the weight of his cock easing into her, different at this angle — tighter._

_He nodded, kissing her again. “Whatever you wish, love.”_

_She rocked her hips into his, rolling their bodies together where they connected, every other part pressed together as if their connection kept their souls entwined as much as their skin._

_She slid her hands down his back, tracing the dips and curves of him, bowing back enough from him to look down and see the slick of her arousal glistening on his cock as he helped her wind her hips. Each thrust sang, their sighs mingling._

_“Touch me, Ahsoka,” he said into her mouth, pulling her atop him so that he sank deeper into her, pulling her hands to his chest as he lifted his hips from the bed. “Take what’s yours.”_

_She shuddered above him, finding ridges and curves and meandering lines that cut into muscle and sinew, moaning at how hard he was and the ease at which he guided her movements, brushing her clit with his thumb._

_Pulling her to him, Ahsoka stretched over his chest, one of his hands at the small of her back as she rode him, her thighs burning as he bowed his hips beneath hers, thrusting upwards so that he caught that one spot inside her that lit her body with each strike._

_She drew his hand to her throat — so large and strong — silently asking him to hold her as she found her rhythm. Maul’s answering groan had her crumpling across his chest. Hands in her hair. His mouth everywhere —_

_“Stay like that,” he breathed, gripping her at the base of her neck, holding her to him by the chest so that when his hips left the bed to drive up into her, gravity did half the work for them._

_Ahsoka whimpered, and he swallowed the sound, praising her between kisses:_

_“Sweet girl. Beautiful girl. So wet for me. Rides her daddy so well --“_

_“Maul,” she whimpered, and he turned his mouth into her ear, grinding upwards while pulling her hips into his, creating flares of sensation that swallowed her up, even as she opened her mouth to cry out. She wove her fingers between his horns, and he choked on a breath that became a laugh of pleasure as he turned his grip to her ass, kneading her flesh in appreciation._

_“I love it when you say my fucking name,” he breathed._

_She moaned, “Maul.”_

_“Do you like riding your daddy’s cock, Ahsoka?” he said into her ear, leaving her shivering. “Would you be a good girl and ride his face if he asked nicely?”_

_She cried out, her legs shuddering. Every muscle in her body drawing a little more tightly towards a centre point that held them taut together._

_“I’d fuck you with my mouth, love. I’d work that sweet little bud of your sex to blooming if you’d let me.”_

_“Maul, please —” she keened._

_“Would you like that?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“I can’t hear you.”_

_“Yes!”_

_“Good girl,” he said, cupping her ass, helping her steady herself as her movements shuddered to a staccato._

_“There!” she gasped._

_“Here?”_

_Stars burs behind her eyes as he struck at that particular chord again, driving her higher, her body rigid as he held her against him._

_“I want to feel that sweet little cunt of yours clenching my cock.”_

_She shuddered, and he hit it again. And again._

_“Take it,” he whispered, licking at her mouth._

_Darkness threatened, his hand taking her by the throat far too gently as he pulled her to him, breathing against her lips, “Take everything you need of me, my Queen.”_

_And she broke against him — a tsunami hitting the shore, her mouth falling open as her orgasm crested, breaking her apart on him. He held her, watching her claim her pleasure, his face so near hers — heavy-lidded and satisfied as her body gave up holding back and gave in to him._

_Maul eased his hands into her hair again, kissing sweet nothings across her cheeks._

_“My Ahsoka.”_

_She whimpered, spent, and he lowered her back to the bed by his side, cradling her in strong arms, his movements slowing but unceasing. Her breathing hitched, eyes fluttering open, her warmth and wet slipping to their thighs as Maul’s thrusts lengthened, drawing out the ripples of sensation that soothed her into supplication. Not done after all._

_“Yours,” she agreed, finding him watching her with a tenderness._

_She gave him a small smile which he met with another kiss — slower this time, burning with his own hunger._

_“You didn’t finish,” she whispered when they broke apart._

_To which he replied, rolling over her once more with a private smile that caught her breath, easing deep inside her in long, smooth strokes, “Oh, one more surely can’t be enough.”_

—

“A change of plan for this evening’s schedule.”

I’m not listening. My pulse drowns Sid out.

It’s been hours, and my phone’s near dead, but I keep checking it just the same. No texts. No voicemail.

It’s a strategic choice to keep Qi’ra in between Tobias and Dryden, one that wouldn’t do much given that while our drummer is fierce, she’s still barely five foot tall, and if the boys really wanted to, they’d rip right through her to get at each other.

Fucking ridiculous.

“— Opening the show for the next leg of the tour, _before_ the Knights. He’ll be joining us this evening in —“

Where are you?

What would happen if I called your name?

Barely hours in-between us, but the silence is deafening.

I am calling your name.

—

_Spent but still hungry, she rest her head on his bicep, running her fingertips across his tattoos._

_Something furtive that looked like pain carved lines around his mouth._

_It cleared her head somewhat._

_“What?” she breathed._

_“I --“ A number of emotions crossed his face, and softening, he swallowed. Fell back to the bed, an arm circling her. Kissed her again. “Nothing.”_

_And he kissed her again, and she melted into the feeling of him — hard and warm and strong and ready._

_Yet, something lingered._

_She pushed back, finding his eyes half-lidded to gold slits, his attention somewhere else._

_Dragging her thumb over his bottom lip, she pulled back enough to look at his face — all those fierce tattoos and his false horns and the shadows beneath his eyes. Someone who’d seen too much and knew too much and carried it all like a mantle, broken bits of his heart on his sleeve and in his throat. Someone who didn’t want you coming too close, and yet, here she was._

_She traced the tattoo around his throat: “Savage.”_

_Ahsoka looked up to find his gaze on hers, searching for some understanding she didn’t yet know herself._

_“How does one stretch a moment so it lasts forever,” he said. “It’s over before it starts.”_

_Heart jumping, she traced his lower lip with her thumb. Giving it an absent kiss, he drifted off somewhere into the dim lights of his trailer, the first blush of dawn turning the sky outside an ominous pink._

_“I never rest,” he said. “This job won’t let me.“ He shook his head._

_“Do you love it?”_

_He searched her, perched over her on one elbow, taking in her body beside him as if seeing her anew for the first time and wanting to preserve the moment. When Maul wound their hands together, kissing her knuckles, there was a quiet significance to the gesture when he looked at their bound digits._

_“It makes me appreciate the effort it takes to stop the important things from constantly slipping through my fingers.”_

_Pressing her face into his pillow, she breathed him deep._

_“Why are you smiling?” he asked._

_Ahsoka closed her eyes — squeezing them shut, really._

_“Because I don’t think either of us are particularly good at saying goodbye.”_

_She peeked at him, finding Maul’s mouth twisted into a small, wry smile. Reaching up, he collected her phone, thumbing it on and opening her message app._

_Ahsoka watched him key in his number._

_He half-shrugged. “So let’s keep saying hello.”_

_Throat tightening, closing off all words and sounds, she rolled over, taking him with her as he discarded the device — back to where it came from, buried in the sheets. Maul pressed his lips to his shoulder, spooning up to the backs of her knees, warm against her back. He brushed the hair off her neck, planting small, tender kisses along the ridge of her shoulder._

_“I don’t want to sleep through this,” she whispered. “I don’t want to lose a minute.”_

_He smiled into her skin, holding her to him in the dim glow of morning as she shut her eyes._

_“Then give me eternity.”_

_She was tempted to tell him, yes, and he could have her soul along with it._

_Ahsoka’s eyes fluttered shut._

_“I love the music,” he murmured. “There’s a magic in it that can set a person free.”_

_But he didn’t love the life. He didn’t love the loneliness. As much could be gleaned from his silence._

_Ahsoka wrapped his arm against her chest, hugging his hand to her as if he might drift away and she’d become his anchor._

_Maul settled behind her, his breathing steadying._

_Somewhere in the drift of sleep she found herself slipping into the comforting lull of his being there with her; a haunting hum rumbling through their bodies — a melody to fill the dark and the quiet, secreting into the lesser hollows of the soul that no one had ever dared search for._

_And Maul began to sing._

_—_

Ridiculous that a little piece of paper slipped into a PVC holder dangling around her neck let her in everywhere. It bore her name — which was in itself insane — and the words “Stage Crew”, and that barely gained her any acknowledgement at all from the bouncers or the roadies or the other bodies moving equipment and doing sound checks and who knows what else.

Set-up. Tear-down. Moving equipment around. Smoking cigarettes off the side door entrance.

(Still gross.)

All that was required of her was to make sure Anakin didn’t go out of his mind with nerves, but even that she’d failed at — giving him bottled water instead of beer.

“I need a Xanax,” he moaned from the toilet after throwing up for the second time.

He was fine, really, Obi-Wan assured her upon popping in and out of the restroom.

Just nervous.

But even Obi-Wan remained unconcerned inasmuch as he was overly pale and he was doing that thing with his moustache that resulted in the ends curling up. She swatted at him twice for it, and gave up — letting him go full evil villain.

She avoided Sid.

She didn’t get a chance to creep backstage beyond Anakin’s closet where they’d set him up with a very small basket of fruit, a plug for his cellular, and a little stool. She’d stolen the bottled water from the Knights of Ren — their lead singer obliging but frowning at her when she’d knocked on their door.

“You’re new,” he remarked, to which Ahsoka shrugged. Up close, it occurred to her that the lead singer was even younger than she was.

She hadn’t dared check on Crimson Dawn.

She hadn’t quite formulated how she’d break the news to Maul, and having driven three hundred sixty nine point five miles to get there with a backpack and a dead phone battery, she was still trying to piece together the fragments of an explanation that might defy every cynical narrative.

Anakin retched again, and Ahsoka rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

“Just be a tough act to follow,” she said. “And don’t monologue. Definitely not about sand.”

He laughed at that.

“ _Fuck_ sand,” he echoed. “I can’t wait to not go to Nevada.”

She smirked, knowing he’d be alright but not certain _she_ would be —

If there was a possibility that she’d made a mistake in coming — assuming Maul would even _want_ to see her again — it hadn’t registered until they’d crossed state lines in the back of Obi-Wan’s shitty sedan, Anakin compulsively cracking his knuckles as he stared out the window with Obi-Wan checking on him in the rearview every five minutes.

“Thank you for doing this, Snips.” He sounded miserable. “Having you here — knowing you’ll be out there — helps a lot.”

She rolled her eyes to the ceiling, squinching them shut as if to dispel the guilt she felt and not entirely disclosing her reasoning for the immediate “YES” she’d given him upon discovering that he wanted her on tour with him as “Anakin Skywalker’s Road Crew.” It didn’t work.

“Don’t worry, Skyguy,” she said. “Someone’s got to keep you in line.”

He huffed a laugh. “We know that isn’t Obi-Wan.”

She grinned, but it faltered. “Anakin? There’s something I need to tell you.”

He opened the door to the bathroom, slouching to the sink to get a faceful of water from the tap. Ahsoka remained rigid, holding up the wall, her nerves kicking into a gallop in her chest all of a sudden — the rhythm all wrong.

She glanced up, finding her own reflection over Anakin’s shoulder wearing a small, worried frown.

“It was only supposed to be one night,” she started.

Ahsoka sucked down a breath.

She told him.

—

Backstage, the crowds screams ringing in my ears as I let the curtain fall behind me, I don’t stop walking as I pass the various enclaves of shadows. I set down my guitar, pull the buds from my ears, let the sound wash over me behind the velvet. It smells musty back here.

“Distracted, tonight,” Sid remarks from his perch at a charger table towards the back-most wall.

I stare at him a long time.

“I’m done. This is it.”

He merely raises an eyebrow.

Dryden barrels past me, Tobias already shouting after him about his performance; how sloppy he gets when he drinks.

Sid doesn’t pay them any notice.

Qi’ra follows, a look passing between me and Sid — an arched eyebrow and a roll of her eyes. She doesn’t give a shit.

I am waiting for Sid to acknowledge my formal resignation.

I could write him a letter, but it’s about as effective as having this conversation again.

“Hardly, Maul. Your theatrics notwithstanding, your contractual obligations notwithstanding, you’ve not the power to accomplish such a thing, even if you tried.” He gives me a thin smile. “The label would murder you. I would _bury_ you.”

He almost laughs.

“You’ll be done when I say you’re done. There’s much we’ve yet to accomplish.”

He’s right of course.

I want to argue that I could walk away. Disappear.

I’m a very competent pet.

What would happen if I applied my skills elsewhere — to faking my own death, perhaps?

“Goodnight, Maul. Foxboro tomorrow.”

There’s no further discussion.

It’s that simple with Sid. His word is law, but I fail to fear him now — now, knowing there are other places where I might draw strength.

I find the kid waiting in the wings — the new talent, still vibrating from his performance. He gives me a smile that seems far too familiar, and I decide that intimidation tactics might be best.

“Get out while you still can,” I tell him as I brush passed.

It’s the only warning I’ll offer him.

My phone’s battery is down to four percent as I hunch into my hoodie, slipping out the side door and crossing the backlot to the trailers. Nod to security. I’m not hungry so I don’t stop for food. All I want is a moment to sequester myself; bury myself into the scent of you that lingers on my sheets and drift for a time in the dream of what might’ve been.

Wasn’t good enough, I suppose.

I wasn’t what you expected.

Angels aren’t earth-bound creatures.

I hate this silence.

I hate this ringing in my ears.

I hate the hollow feeling in my chest.

I hate that you’re not here.

I pull open the door to my trailer. Someone’s lit the lights inside, dimmed to half-cast, throwing shadows in a way that should be comfortable.

Where are you?

I am calling your --

—

“Ahsoka?”

The hard lines of his exhaustion appeared to melt to surprise, which turned to confusion as Maul took two steps into his trailer. He’d weathered something in the hours they’d been apart, she thought: she saw it in the dark crescents beneath his eyes, the defensive way his shoulders hunched up. A muscle ticked in his jaw. A hardness about the eyes.

She tried to wrestle her nerves into something else, setting _Wuthering Heights_ beside her on the bed, the page unmarked.

“Hello,” she said, trying for a small smile.

Maul took another step, trying to better understand.

“I made tea?” she offered. “I hope that’s okay.”

“This is surely some sort of witchcraft —“

Puzzled, she asked, “What?”

“How did you —“ he started

To that, she turned over the little badge at her neck, displaying her staff tag for him. “My brother is —” She flinched. “He’s signing with Dark Side, and --“

She looked down, feeling increasingly like she’d gotten it wrong somehow; she’d twisted the significance of a few hours, misinterpreting the message.

“He offered me a spot on the tour with him, as his stage hand — thought it might help me learn a few things.” Helpless, she shrugged. Gave him a smile that trembled at the edges. “And.” She took a breath. “I guess ‘eternity’ is an awful long time, but I kind of liked the sound of it?”

He dropped his phone to the table, hesitating and worn and a little helpless.

Maul frowned, and looked down, blinking hard.

It squeezed her chest, vicelike in its insistence, the silence ringing like the chasm it was between them, now. Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe it was only meant to be a _night_ , and not forever. Maybe that was just something Maul said to people, because it was part of the dark romance of him — part of the spell of being with him.

Ahsoka stood, a weight settling on her. She dragged a breath in through her teeth. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think things through,” she laughed, trying to hide the tremor in her voice. “I’ll go. We don’t have to —“

“This can’t be real,” he murmured, rubbing a hand down his face.

Her heart sank further.

In the small corridor between Maul’s bedroom and the door, she tried to snake past him, but his hand reached for her before she could cross — fingers trailed from her sleeve to her stomach, resting there.

He let out a shuddering breath, pressing the warmth of his palm against her.

Maul blinked in surprise.

“Thought I was bloody hallucinating.”

Ahsoka sucked in a breath, reacting to his touch with an instinctive sort of hunger that had her fingers wrapped into his sleeve, clutching at him.

Those wide, gold eyes turned to her, surprise registering.

“You’re actually here?”

A smile threatened, something easing in her chest as he rounded into her space, their legs tangling as he crashed into her, hands sinking into her hair, his mouth slanting across her own. They travelled backwards two paces, Ahsoka pinned to the countertop in the kitchenette as Maul gasped against her tongue in a tiny, desperate laugh, and kissed her again. Her hands found his shoulders; the back of his neck, and something came unfettered as he swept her up.

Sound roared back in: the slamming of their hearts matched in perfect concert; resonant and perfect, a melody in her ears, her blood on fire.

She gasped a little cry against his mouth, and he stilled, pressing his forehead to hers.

“Anakin Skywalker.” He licked his lips. “Is your _brother_?”

She smiled.

He kissed her again, teeth sinking into her lower lip.

“And I’m yours,” she breathed.

—

This isn’t our scene. That much is made clear by the separation of work from pleasure, but that’s alright. We’re both passengers on this ride, and though there are signposts along the way, I don’t think we always know which path we ought to take to get there. No matter; while uncharted, there’s some adventure in it when neither of us quite know the way.

I’ve been everywhere before, but you look with wide-open eyes; with wonder at a world that’s left me tired. Renewed, I sing you the stories of the roads I’ve walked. I’d share them with you a hundred times to see the light in your eyes, laughing and filled with joy — a shining star amidst all this darkness.

It’s imperfect, but better now, returning night after night, knowing that the music sometimes needs to change and grow teeth and claws so that we can hold on.

It drives some of us, you see.

It sweeps us into its rhythms and it allows us to submerge into sheer sensation for a time. It lets us recall every dream and every hope we’d forgotten, struggling alone in the dark.

I suppose we’re both a little out of our depths, now, but I don’t feel as if I’m drowning so long as you’re holding my hand:

That good girl I summoned through sheer will alone — I was wrong. Not an angel, though a saviour of sorts. Not so lost anymore in keeping my company.

So. We’ll make this our temple, now. It was built by others before us, but together, we uphold a legacy and a tradition, and while I serve at its altar nightly, you light the fires.

Thank you, for this, and everything else.

You gave me one night of your time.

I gladly give you my soul.

And you can have —

Everything.

_\-- fin --_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My initial plan for this story was to go 1:1 with Lil Peep's "Brightside." I can't say I'm a fan of his work, but that song in particular sticks inasmuch as it's about a guy, who meets a girl, and they have a thing that doesn't work out. I wanted to put Maul and Ahsoka in a situation that was doomed from the start -- he's a musician and she's an unwilling participant who gets caught up in something much bigger than either of them expect. It's a connection that shouldn't happen, but in defiance of the stars and the Force and whatever else might stand in their way, it does. Then you have a problem: Maul the musician is constantly on the move on tour, unhappy with what he does and who he's doing it for, while Ahsoka goes back to a life unsatisfied, but changed for the experience. Everyone mourns. Sad!fic. 
> 
> Well, you can all thank _Wrath of Maul_ for upsetting me enough that I couldn't leave it like that. So, something of a switch-stance happened: here's Anakin with an opportunity, waxing lyrical about open doors and taking chances. Ahsoka takes the advice of her mentor and brother, and I think, in the story beyond this story, that it's the right thing for them because they're both better with each other than apart. The situation is imperfect, but it's made the odds a little less impossible because they're not alone anymore. This is Ahsoka taking Maul's hand. This is Maul and Ahsoka at the point of a team-up that never happened in TCW. This is Maul and Ahsoka in a position where Anakin might be saved down the line, because they would be so much stronger working together. 
> 
> Thank you for reading. If you want to come and chat, you can find me on [Tumblr](http://octobertown.tumblr.com) and [Twitter](http://twitter.com/octobertownie). I'm working on a couple of projects atm for this pairing, including [The Poison Garden](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25919131) (Corporate AU), the sequel to [Reign](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25393969), and also some spooky canonverse-adjacent stuff for Halloween, so don't be a stranger. :) 
> 
> \- october
> 
> **Knights of Ren**  
>  Kylo Ren, Lead Vocals  
> Ap'lek, Lead Guitar  
> Cardo, Rhythm Guitar  
> Kuruk, Bass  
> Trudgen, Synths  
> Ushar, Strings  
> Vicrul, Percussion
> 
>  **Crimson Dawn**  
>  Dryden Vos, Lead Singer  
> Maul, Lead Guitar  
> Tobias Beckett, Rhythm Guitar  
> Margo, Bass  
> Cornelius Evazan, Synths  
> Qi’ra, Percussion


End file.
